Lady Izanami’s song.
Commanders yelled up and down the line, gaijin wardrums pounding in time with the Earthcrusher’s tread. The army formed up—a legion of folded steel and embossed iron and grim, bloodless faces. First came the shreddermen, their scythesaw arms cutting at the air. They were backed by infantry—Shiman and Morcheban. Standards waving proud in the corpseflesh wind, sigils of Fox and Tiger and Phoenix side by side with the stags and gryfons and frostlions of the gaijin Houses. The sky-fleet gathered above—lumbering ironclads, bristling with shuriken-throwers and flame-spitters. Gaijin rotor-thopters and Phoenix corvettes weaving between them. Amidst the DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM of its colossal tread, the Earthcrusher stomped into position on the right flank, vomiting black tar into the skies.
Yukiko stood on the war-machine’s bridge, staring through cracked viewing portals to the horrors beyond. Her hand found her tantō—the blade her father had given her for her ninth birthday. She could almost feel him beside her, smell the smoke from his pipe. If he were here, he’d smile, call her “Ichigo,” press his lips to her brow and tell her to be brave.
But he wasn’t here. He’d died for her, fighting for what he loved. For something greater. Just as Tora Takehiko had done before her, flying beyond the hellgate and somehow sealing it closed. What awaited her beyond that black? Would she ever return to the ones left behind?
She turned to Kin, strapped into the pilot’s harness, his brass skin gleaming in the light of the control boards. The suit looked strange without a mechabacus on its chest—stranger still without the helmet, the boy inside watching her with his knife-bright eyes. He’d refused painkillers for fear they’d dull his wits. A sheen of sweet gleamed on his brow. His face was pale, etched with fear.
But not for himself.
“I don’t want you to do this,” he said.
“I have to.” Her smile trembled at the edges. “Time to be the hero.”
“Did you ever notice our heroes never live to be happy? Kitsune no Akira, Tora Takehiko, all the stormdancers of legend. None of them died in their beds. None of them got to enjoy the victories they fought for, or live in the world they defended.”
“Would we love them as much if they came home when the war was done?”
“I would,” he sighed. “I’d love them more. With every breath I took. With every beat of my heart. I’d love with everything I had to give if she came back to me.”
“She?”
He whispered then, a single, tiny syllable as wide as the sky.
“You.”
Yukiko stepped up to the pilot’s harness, to the boy encased in brass. The boy who’d suffered like no other for the sake of his heart. A boy who’d do anything, risk everything for the one he loved. For her.
She stood on tiptoes, cupped his cheeks with her hands. And drifting close, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his skin, she pressed her lips to his.
Her eyelids fluttered closed and the world fell away. The noise and light, the grief and fear. Only them, the pair of them, her mouth on his, soft as the dreams of clouds, lighting a flame inside her, melting away the frost, leaving only an aching, blissful warm. The taste of him, the feel of him, his breath in her lungs, sighing from the depths of herself and breathing into his mouth. A declaration. A farewell. A kiss that would burn in her mind, that would make her ache every moment she had left beneath this poisoned sky.
A kiss worth dying for.
She drew away slowly, reluctantly, Kin lunging forward and keeping his lips pressed against hers for just a few more desperate seconds. But at last they parted, looking into each other’s eyes. So much unsaid between them. No time left to say any of it.
“Come back to me,” he whispered. “Please.”
She said nothing, tears welling in her eyes. He took her hand in his, the brass gauntlet engulfing her fingers, gentle as falling snowflakes. And then she pulled away, feeling her heart tearing in her chest, a pain so real she could taste blood in her mouth.
“Good-bye, Kin.”
“Don’t say that…”
“Too late,” she smiled, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Too late.”
Head bowed, eyes flooding, she turned and walked away.
*
The Everstorm pack greeted them with roars of approval as they rose into the air, their Khan and the girl upon his back. They could see adoration in the eyes of the monkey-children on the sky-ships, fixed upon this slip of a thing clinging to their Khan’s back—this tiny girl who moved entire nations with the sound of her voice. If anyone could return from the black and freezing depths, it would be her.
She spoke aloud, but her voice rang in the Kenning, in each arashitora’s mind, burning with the heat of a pale white flame.
“Each of you know what you must do.”
Kaiah growled, long and low.